Bell of Pennsylvania uses misleading and illegal sales techniques to force telephone customers to purchase services that are optional, state officials charged yesterday.

Consumer Advocate David Barasch said an undercover investigation showed Bell sales representatives, following written scripts, dupe unwitting customers by asking a series of questions about telephone use, but sell them up to six services, even if their answers to the questions show the services aren't needed, and in some cases, technically can't improve their telephone service.

During the past four years, Barasch said, Bell customers have paid $176 million for the services, such as call waiting, touch tone, call forwarding, three-way calling and speed calling.

Barasch filed complaints against the company with the Public Utility Commission seeking four actions:

- To have practices covered by the state utility code stopped.

- To have the company fined.

- To order refunds.

- To direct Bell to cease using quotas, commissions and incentives to encourage productivity by its sales persons.

The complaint also seeks to have Bell develop new marketing programs in cooperation with the PUC, the consumer advocate's office and the state attorney general.

The company could be fined $1,000 a day for each day each violation occurred. According to Barasch, Bell processes 2,500 requests for telephone service daily, or about 650,000 a year. With nearly 3.9 million customers, Bell provides telephone service to about 80 percent of the state.

In a companion matter, Attorney General LeRoy Zimmerman yesterday filed suit against the company in Commonwealth Court, asking that a sales practice involving a wiring repair option offered by the company be made a violation of the state's consumer protection statute. The wiring option is not regulated by the PUC.

Bell vice president Regis F. Filtz denounced the complaints, which were announced during a Capitol news conference, calling the charges "an affront to our 1,886 service representatives who are responsible for helping customers select the services they want. We find no justification for the complaints."

While Barasch was unable to estimate how many of Bell's 3.9 million customers were victimized by the alleged illegal sales practices, he said the investigators, posing as a variety of individuals, including a welfare mother, found the deceptions at service centers across the state, including Bell's residential service center in Allentown.

The practices also occurred at centers in Scranton, Harrisburg, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, State College, Altoona, Reading, Williamsport and Wilkes-Barre, according to affidavits filed with the PUC complaint.

The charges were based on 32 calls made by the agents from the attorney general's Bureau of Consumer Protection late last year. The agents posed as potential customers inquiring about phone service.

Barasch said he was able to begin developing the case last June and July after receiving by mail "a plain envelope with no return address on it." That envelope contained a copy of the script used by the Bell salespersons and other information outlining the sales practices, Barasch said.

"It was alleged to us that Bell had ordered its employees to use this script whenever a customer called to inquire about new service," Barasch said. "Our investigation found that the script, or something very much like it, was in fact being widely used by the telephone company."

The undercover investigators, he said, discovered that Bell representatives "recommended a package of services, including up to six optional services, to almost every customer, regardless of his or her telephone usage as described in the telephone call."

Many of the services, he said, were not needed by the descriptions given by the undercover agents and more than doubled the cost of telephone service.

In one call made by an agent, Zimmerman said, the agent told the sales representative she was a welfare mother who received $535 a month to live. "She was assigned a package of services which cost $28.55 a month.

"The Bell representative never discussed the woman's calling needs, never told the woman that many of the purchased services were optional and never informed the woman that she could get basic phone service in her area for as little as $6.65 a month," Zimmerman said.

The suit filed with Commonwealth Court alleges that Bell's $2-a-month Guardian Plan for telephone wiring inside homes violates the consumer protection law because customers are enrolled without being asked or the service explained.

The plan is four times more expensive than a basic wiring protection service offered customers for 50 cents-a-month. The Guardian Plan adds a loaner phone for 60 days if the problem is due to the telephone and not the wiring. The company has collected $7.7 million during the past 14 months for the service.

Based upon Bell's prior experience, Zimmerman said, residential inside wiring repairs are needed an average of once every 14 years.